As Halo Moves to Activision, Halo Studios Writers Tease What Might Have Been

Following the launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved, Halo Studios has put out a blog post detailing plans for the future of Master Chief’s story. It’s an interesting look at where the series might have gone, prior to the recent announcement that Activision is now the shepherd of the Halo series.

The next Halo game was reportedly still years away, but the blog post, penned by Halo franchise writer Alex Wakeford, gives us a peek behind the curtain with hints about the studio’s plans, but also an attempt at canonizing a story that’s been told through games, remakes, books, and TV. You can check out the blog post for its list of retcons and continuity clarifications.

While the majority of the blog was written prior to the Xbox reshuffle, when Halo Studios thought the series was still in its hands, there are addendums written prior to the news breaking. At one point, Wakeford joked that you’ll have to wait until next week to find out more about the Sacristan Order, before dropping a note: “This joke sure took on new dimensions after last week’s news.”

Elsewhere, Wakeford talked about the next novel by Troy Denning, titled Halo: Fireteam Noble. “Many have been asking whether this novel will still be releasing,” Wakeford said. “To this we can say that it is absolutely our intent to see this project cross the finish line. Troy has written a fantastic story and a good chunk of the editorial process has been conducted.”

Another novel, Halo: Burn the Road Home, written by senior franchise writer at Halo Studios, Kenneth Peters, is also in the works, though its future is as uncertain as Fireteam Noble. There’s no word on whether preorders will get a refund if the projects don’t make it over the line.

We also have official art of the Primordial, by Sam Wood. The Primordial would go on to become the Gravemind from Halo 2. “A creature of horrifying providence and intent known by many names — the Timeless One, the Primordial, and eventually the Gravemind,” Wakeford said. “This twisted progeny of the Precursors was executed by Bornstellar through the use of a timelock on Gyre 11, reducing its form to dust by subjecting it to the passage of millions of years in mere moments. But the Primordial’s experiments had borne fruit. Having infected itself with the Flood, the consciousness of this strange being passed into the parasite’s hive mind where it is awakened whenever the Flood successfully form a compound intelligence.”

Perhaps the most interesting bit of information for Halo lore fans comes at the end of the blog post with a tease of the Xalanyn, children of Abaddon. “THE ENDLESS EMERGE,” Wakeford declared. “And finally, as is tradition, we’ll leave you with something that hopefully sparks your imagination and lets your canon curiosities run wild with endless questions.”

The Xalanyn are an advanced race of immortal beings whose members were imprisoned by the Forerunners. The suggestion here is Halo 7, or whatever Halo Studios’ now scrapped next Halo game would have been called, would have revealed more of the mysterious overarching antagonists.

The concept art is very cool and makes me a bit sad that Halo will probably never see them. It’s about time Halo got some new enemies to chew through. Instead, Halo will probably become Xbox’s Call of Duty (let’s pretend Call of Duty isn’t Xbox’s Call of Duty, for the sake of argument).

Halo Studios’ final game in the series was released globally on July 28, 2026, with IGN’s Halo: Campaign Evolved review praising the “gunplay that revolutionized first-person console games” which makes it still “worth playing today.” The game was a testbed for a switch to the Unreal Engine, following a middling launch for Halo Infinite, which used the studio’s proprietary Slipspace Engine.

Yesterday, people at Ninja Theory announced layoffs following the Xbox reshuffle that resulted in the studio closing down. Staff at Gears of War: E-Day developer The Coalition are also reportedly expecting layoffs, despite positive reviews of the studio’s latest game.